Better get this over with, the Friesian mare mused as she carefully made her way downhill toward the forests where she knew her father would be waiting. She hadn’t visited him in almost two seasons, and she knew he was likely to be sour about it, but the very least she could do for a blind old man was show up late. She dreaded the state he must be in by now; the last time she’d seen him, he was covered in mud and his hair was beginning to mat. Without Sterre around, he had lost all desire to care for himself.
Inka did not know the specifics of their falling-out: only that they’d had a heated argument and Sterre had left him. After seeing the extreme change in his character that Sterre’s disappearance had caused, Inka had spent a few days searching high and low for the little spitfire of a mare, hoping (futilely) that she had not left the mountain and was simply keeping away from everyone. But as days turned into weeks and Inka found no trace of the mare, her hopes diminished. And she began to grow worried for her father.
Mighty as he had once been, he was old now, and he needed her. Sterre’s abandonment had had more impact on him than he would admit.
But before her hooves could reach the tree-laden foothills of the peak, she heard a scream - a deep, terrible scream that could have belonged to one horse and one horse only. With her heart in her throat, the tall mare scrambled back up the slopes as quickly as she could manage. It took some searching, for she had not been able to place exactly where the scream had come from, but eventually, she saw him. Higher up on a cliff edge that overlooked the valleys below, Het Vuur stood with the sunset setting his filthy black coat afire. Inka paused to look at him, shocked by what she saw. He was a skeleton, his face going white with age and his hair more dirty and matted than she had ever seen it. What’s worse, his legs were covered in blood.
Before she could call his name, Het Vuur took a step forward and fell face-first off the cliff.
“Dad, NO!” Inka screamed, but there was nothing to be done; she watched in horror as her father fell to his death, making a hideous racket as his body slammed into the thick cluster of trees below.
Inka stood frozen, staring helplessly at the break in the canopy where Het Vuur had disappeared, and began to hyperventilate. Her heart screamed at her to gallop down the side of the mountain at breakneck speed - if she seriously hurt herself on the way, so be it - and to find her father in the shadows of the forest where he had fallen. But her brain told her that there was no point, that there was no way he had survived that fall, and that by seeking him out she would only subject herself to the traumatizing sight of his smashed and broken body.
She fell to her knees on the hard, stony ground, and began to weep loudly.
Some time passed - how much, she could not say - but she was beginning to feel the weight of exhaustion pressing down on her when, during a quiet moment in which she attempted to slow her breathing, she heard something.
A whinny. A child’s whinny.
Her sobs abruptly stopped. Holding her breath, the Friesian mare raised her tear-stained face and looked up with liquid brown eyes toward the cliff Het Vuur had thrown himself from. The setting sun had cast the stone in hues of gold and purple, but otherwise she could see nothing. Yet the sound had most definitely come from up there.
After taking a few moments to gather her wits, Inka climbed the last stretch of mountain with some difficulty and arrived at the sheltered cliff. As she ducked beneath the low branches of a few trees, the scene of the crime came into view and she stopped in her tracks with a gasp. Her eyes darted over every inch of the scene, taking it all in. “Oh my god,” she whispered.
Sterre was dead. Facing away from her, the mare lay in a pool of her own blood with her head resting against the rock face at her back. Between her legs there stood a trembling foal, its ears splayed sideways and its head hanging low. With the colt’s amber eyes and bright, diamond-shaped star on his forehead, there was no mistaking whose he was. His birth sac still clung to his body like a sticky, transluscent cape, suggesting that Sterre was already dead or dying by the time he was born. The horrifying thought that Het Vuur had not lived to see his child suddenly crossed Inka’s mind; what if he had not been aware of the foal when he came across Sterre’s body? Would knowing have stopped him from jumping?
Fresh tears blurred Inka’s vision as she crept forward, lowering her nose to bump it with the foal’s. He seemed barely aware of her; likely he was freezing and exhausted from going hours without a single drink of milk. “It’s okay. You’re okay, little one,” she crooned in a hoarse voice, and stepped over Sterre’s legs to remove the birth sac from the colt’s hindquarters. It was strange to think that this was her half-brother, and that now they were both parent-less.
He will be nobody’s brother if I don’t get him away from this place and find him something to eat.
Inka’s abdomen was taut with anxiety and her head was spinning. She had visited Valentine a few weeks ago for a secret tryst, but it was too early to know yet if she was with foal, and far too early for her to be producing any milk. She would need to find a wet nurse for him before she even considered introducing him to her daughters: which would be a problem, because - as far as she was aware - there were no heavily pregnant or nursing mares on the peak.
Trying her hardest to avoid looking directly at the sight of Sterre’s dead body, Inka took a few steps backward and began to turn away, calling the colt from over her shoulder. “Come along, little one.” With a few unsteady, bumbling steps, he eventually tottered after her, making an instinctive beeline for the gentle curve of her flank. “There’s nothing there for you,” she told him gently, and winced when his teeth fumbled for a grip. After a few futile sucking motions, the colt gave up.
With great difficulty and care, Inka began to lead the foal down the mountain, deliberately making for a different direction than the one Het Vuur had fallen in. It was slow going, for the poor child had only just learned to walk let alone traverse a mountainside, but helping him helped keep her mind free of the endless pit of despair that threatened to swallow it. Her blood felt cold; she could not stop thinking about what she had seen, and several times she had to rest and collect herself before she began to weep again. But the sad sight of Het Vuur and Sterre’s last child was enough to give her the strength to keep going. She could grieve more later - for now, this colt was her first priority.
During one of these rests, as the last of the sun’s rays cast long shadows across the landscape, the colt tried to suckle again. Inka did not have the heart to push him away, so she let him.
To her utter bewilderement, her milk began to flow.
i N K A
vulcan politician; daughter of het vuur
16; friesian; EE aa; 17hh |